GREEN BUILDING GUIDE
Romilly Madew, Chief Executive
Green Building Council of Australia
As you walk through a city – be it Hanoi, Houston or
Hobart – it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking our
urban environments to be invulnerable.
Beautiful buildings and impressive infrastructure
rise and evolve around us, and for most, cities are a
representation of hope, possibility and opportunity.
It’s our default to think of urban areas as living,
breathing, self-sustaining organisms unto themselves,
and in many ways they are. But as anyone who has
fallen victim to one of Australia’s all too frequent
extreme weather events will attest, our cities are
delicate systems. And factors that can upset their
fragile balance are just around the corner.
Sydney’s recent storms, Brisbane’s series of floods, or
Victoria’s almost yearly heatwaves and bushfires are
the kinds of events that throw our cities’ vulnerabilities
into the sharpest relief. Yet failure to address the social
and economic challenges facing them poses an equal
threat to their long-term sustainability.
To build truly strong, sustainable and resilient cities,
the first step is remembering that a chain is only
as strong as its weakest link. Cities are a matrix of
economic, social and environmental components, and
resilience can only be achieved when investment is
made across all of these areas.
The City of Melbourne’s Resilient Melbourne Strategy,
which has been developed following the city’s
induction into the Rockefeller Foundations 100
Resilient Cities program, has adopted this new,
integrated way of thinking about urban resilience. Its
strength lies in an acknowledgement that social and
economic problems work to intensify the destructive
impacts of environmental problems, and vice versa.
For example, the strategy says that while Melbourne
is “liveable for those with easy access to essential
services and a well-paying job, living in the world’s
sixth-most expensive city presents major difficulties for
many Melburnians, particularly in areas of entrenched
disadvantage and those located furthest from the
central business district.”
It recognises that unaffordable housing is a precursor
to urban sprawl, which in turn gives way to congestion
– a problem that Infrastructure Australia says will cost
GOVLINK » ISSUE 3 2016
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